Thirty years ago, when Monte Pascoe was making a name for himself, politics still was considered an honorable pursuit. It was a form of public service, a way to pay back the community for the opportunities it had given you.
Pascoe was part of a remarkable political cohort, a generation of idealists who are now in their 60s and 70s. Most of them were Democrats, but there were Republicans, too.
That generation is beginning to fade from the scene, following into obscurity the notions that public institutions are worthy of some level of trust and hope, and that people enter into politics in order to do good work.
Pascoe’s death March 2 at the age of 71 suggests the beginning of the passing of that age of activism. Post Columnist Dick Kreck, in an e-mail, called Pascoe “the first of the young lions of the late 1960s/early 1970s to go.”
Actually, former Denver District Attorney Dale Tooley was the first, but his death from cancer in 1985 was very much more premature. He was barely past 50.
Pascoe’s death came quickly, from a stroke. It startled a generation of people who are often startled by something else: that old gray fellow staring back at them from the bathroom mirror every day.
They’re people like Dick Lamm and Hank Brown and others who are robust and active and yet are inevitably, and properly, yielding ground to new generations of leaders.
Like most of the rest of his cohort, Pascoe paid attention to physical fitness. He still walked to work every day, regardless of the weather.
“He was one of the most fundamentally decent human beings I’ve ever known,” longtime friend and walking partner Ed Benton told The Post.
Pascoe was a gentleman and a gentle man. Good-natured and with a warm sense of humor, he could debate without vilifying. Lamm called him “the perfect citizen. … He worked hard and successfully, but he was always there for good civic causes. He just kept giving.”
He was not especially good at winning elections – unlike his wife, Pat, who served many years in the Colorado legislature. He lost bids for the Denver School Board and mayor’s office, but he served in many other ways.
Pascoe’s generation was – is – one that produced some of this state’s brightest political stars. The Democrats were inspired by the martyred John F. Kennedy and activated by the grueling Vietnam War. Then came Watergate, which got many Democrats elected in the backlash election of 1974.
Lamm won his first of three terms as governor. Gary Hart was elected to the U.S. Senate in his first try at elected office. Two years earlier, Pat Schroeder had begun her long tenure in Congress.
Others in that generation of stars include former lieutenant governors Mark Hogan and Nancy Dick and Lamm’s wife, Dottie, as well as former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.
But it wasn’t only Democrats who were working for change. There were then-young Republicans like Bill Armstrong, an Aurora legislator who became a U.S. senator; U.S. Rep. Jim Johnson, a war critic from Fort Collins; and Hank Brown, the former U.S. senator who is now president of the University of Colorado.
Interestingly, a majority of them are lawyers. Lawyers and politicians were held in higher regard 30 years ago; so was the press. And the electorate was scrupulously balanced. In 1978, Republican Armstrong was elected to his first Senate term by the same impressive proportion that re-elected Democrat Lamm: 59 percent.
There seems to be less nobility in elected office today, and it doesn’t attract the best and the brightest the way it once did. The current ethics problems in the Colorado legislature symbolize that difference. It’s not all bad; institutions, including politics and media, are more sensitive and responsive to misbehavior.
But the age of idealism is fading as the idealists age. In his inauguration speech, John F. Kennedy spoke about the torch being passed to a new generation. That was more than 45 years ago. If he were still alive, the former president would be 88 years old today.
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
